A lightsaber fight where the bad guy asks the good guy to join him in ruling the galaxy

A scene with a scary Jedi cave

Speeders

A bit of trench warfare

Going to a new planet to enlist the help of a shady criminal type

Who ultimately betrays the rebellion

The rebels escaping on the Falcon as it jumps to hyperdrive just in the nick of time

The irony I find though is the things all the fans that didn’t like it complained about were the bits that didn’t emulate previous stories. They loved most of that stuff and hated the things like Rey’s parentage not being important, the ‘Emperor’ dies early, the plan to disable the shield seen 3 times already in Star Wars films doesn’t work in ‘McGyver 3-2-1-0 style’ as my wife wonderfully terms it.

Maybe the appeal is purely nostalgia and to get $2bn you need to tell the same story again with even less variation like The Force Awakens.

A lightsaber fight where the bad guy asks the good guy to join him in ruling the galaxy

A scene with a scary Jedi cave

Speeders

A bit of trench warfare

Going to a new planet to enlist the help of a shady criminal type

Who ultimately betrays the rebellion

The rebels escaping on the Falcon as it jumps to hyperdrive just in the nick of time

The irony I find though is the things all the fans that didn’t like it complained about were the bits that didn’t emulate previous stories. They loved most of that stuff and hated the things like Rey’s parentage not being important, the ‘Emperor’ dies early, the plan to disable the shield seen 3 times already in Star Wars films doesn’t work in ‘McGyver 3-2-1-0 style’ as my wife wonderfully terms it.

Maybe the appeal is purely nostalgia and to get $2bn you need to tell the same story again with even less variation like The Force Awakens.

The problem with that is two fold though, first it fails because they’re betrayed by a character that they had absolutely no reason to trust or rely on and secondly, it renders an entire storyline pointless. If they didn’t want to successfully disable the shield then they should have just found Finn something else to do, no one forced them to include disabling a shield.

Which is a fair argument, I liked the subversion of the trope but in the end it’s a detail.

The overall point is that for all Jim’s comparison is accurate it’s not what people who dislike TLJ have been moaning about. There’s probably a thousand posts there and nobody is talking about AT-ATs on a white planet, the Falcon escape, speeders (even if there’s a slight salt/snow diference). In fact most were very positive about the Yoda cameo.

To be fair though, those things are mainly window dressing whereas some complaints are about the plot.

Sure but in the main they are also the plot elements that diverge from the Star Wars norm, not the ones that conform. So in the ‘box office’ thread my interest is not so much the detail of that, we’ve gone over it endlessly in the dedicated film thread.

(As an aside: While I liked a lot of the directions the film took, I was praying Rey would not be Luke’s daughter when 90% seemed to be hoping she would be in the most obvious plot twist ever, I didn’t love it overall, I felt something missing emotionally.)

On the theory they preyed too much on nostalgia though, I don’t think it adds up because the previous film traded on almost being a remake and the complaints about TLJ have never really been about that familiarity. (Not exclusively, Millar mentioned it and Christian too but almost nobody else).

I think people don’t complain so much about it now because it’s just such a given at this point. TFA, Rogue One and TLJ have all traded very heavily on nostalgic back references to the original trilogy (I haven’t seen Solo but I gather that’s the same too). Clearly that’s the model for these films and people are choosing to see them on that basis.

I’ve liked R1 more each time I watch it, largely because of where it’s so different from the standard Star Wars film - not just the ending, but how the main characters are less idealized archetypes and instead feel like people suffering under the Empire, and damaged by the choices they’ve had to make. It’s very SW in the plot details, but works because of the characters and tone (which is probably why I’m at best neutral on Solo).

I unabashedly love that film. I’ve never been a huge SW fan; I enjoy the films but I haven’t seen the cartoons, read the comics and novels*, etc. But a think Rogue One is a great addition to the franchise, and I really appreciate the creativity of building an entire film from one line of dialogue in the original Star Wars film.

Come to think of it, Solo did something similar with the “Kessel run” line.

*I confess I did buy the original Star Wars paperback credited to George Lucas, and the Alan Dean Foster sequel A Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, but my excuse is “it was the 70s”.

I can’t say I agree. I don’t think they complained and just got used to it. I think they want it and don’t like it when it differs.

I think Solo’s problem has always been apparent. It’s taking a character that’s very aligned to a particular actor and seemed like a bad idea, anti nostalgia in some strange way. Almost nobody here has been excited about this film, I wasn’t, I quite enjoyed it for what it was but it’s the least interested I have ever been in seeing a Star Wars film. If my weekend had been busy it would probably have been a DVD watch.

I am still really interested in what Abrams does for episode 9 and Rian Johnson’s off the main thread trilogy. Which maybe even haters of TLJ may like when he isn’t given the chance to shit on their youthful dreams

My first response was that the characters seemed too one-dimensional and we didn’t really get a chance to know or understand them. I’ve done almost a complete 180 on that (with the exception of Jyn, who I think is criminally underdeveloped), loving how much we get from characters like Cassian, Chirrut and Baze, and even Bodhi. And Krennic’s sort of middle-manager villain is a fantastic counter to the bigger bads like Vader, Ren, the Emperor, and Tarkin.

Shifting gears before Star Wars devours the entire board, how do people think Incredibles and Jurassic World will do?

I have a weird feeling they will underperform what the studios are hoping. I don’t think the Incredibles are as big as a board like this makes it seem, and Jurassic should have a drop similar to Force Awakens to Last Jedi. In my opinion.

My kids are super excited about Incredibles 2. That’s hugely anecdotal but they are and I never force anything on them, my son just watches the original all the time on his own volition.

Jurassic World I have no idea as I never got the appeal of any of it ever. There seems very little buzz, I think it will do much worse than the last one but I can’t deny I was clueless to that being a massive hit.